The first 3DMark is now 25 years old: 3DMark99 was released in October 1998 for Windows 95/98

I still remember running the original 3DMark99 benchmark repeatedly as a nerdy PC hardware enthusiast at 15 years old when it came out... making it 25 years old today after it was released in October 1998.

2

3DMark99 supported Windows 95 and Windows 98 at the time, with DirectX 6.0 compatible hardware. After that, 3DMark99 MAX was released, and then the unleashing of DirectX updates and the massively increased number of advancements in graphics cards from ATI and NVIDIA at the time.

3DMark2000 was released in December 1999, while my favorites of the day in 3DMark2001 and 3DMark2001 SE were released in March 2001 and February 2002, respectively. There have been plenty of 3DMark releases since then, which turned into the 3DMark suite back in 2013, which started with FireStrike, followed by TimeSpy, Port Royal, and then last year we had Speed Way.

3DMark's new Speed Way benchmark is far more advanced, using the DirectX12 Ultimate API that features ray tracing. It's one of the hardest benchmarks 3DMark has ever created. Bonus: if you want to check out some of the older 3DMark benchmarks, the company has released them all for free... so you can check it out and bench your system on it.

3DMark releases 1998-2013

• 3DMark99 - October 1998
• 3DMark99 MAX - March 1999
• 3DMark2000 - December 1999
• 3DMark2001 - March 2021
• 3DMark2001 SE - February 2002
• 3DMark03 - February 2003
• 3DMark05 - September 2004
• 3DMark06 - January 2006
• 3DMark Vantage - April 2008
• 3DMark11 - December 2010

3DMark (suite) - 2013 to this day

• FireStrike - 2013
• TimeSpy - 2016
• Port Royal - 2019
• Speed Way - 2022